Tuesday, 3 March 2015

Loyalist bandsmen will participate in a Sin Fein Ard Fheis with the Loyalist Londonderry Band's Forum to make a presentation at the annual conference, in what McGuinness calls Londonderry, but which Irish Republicans call Doire, this weekend.

Loyalist Derek Moore, who is the co-ordinator, said, "We are taking the opportunity to speak for ourselves and to raise issues that are important to bands."The two-day Ard Fheis is being held in the Millennium Forum in Derry.

It is just the second time Sin Fein's annual conference has been held in British Occupied Ireland. In 2011, Rev David Latimer, a former British army chaplain from Derry, who served with the British Army in Afghanistan, was the principal speaker, when the Ard Fheis was in Belfast's Waterfront Hall.

The Loyalist bandsmen will address the issue of educational under achievement, among young working-class Protestants. Derek Moore said, "We will be speaking about the educational under-achievements of young protestants. Only 20% of them are leaving school with enough qualifications to get an interview. It is a big issue."

Martin McGuinness welcomed the loyalist contribution, stating "I warmly welcome the fact that the Loyalist Londonderry Bands Forum will this weekend make a presentation to the Sin Fein Ard Fheis in the city. I think that leadership has been shown in the city of Derry, and is something that could be followed everywhere."

POW STATEMENT FROM ROE HOUSE 02.03.15

Director General's attempts to silence and cover-up Exposed

Sue McAllister's latest letter in The Irish News (25-02-15) with its usual plethora of 'safety and security' rhetoric is laced with deliberate inaccuracies and downright lies. In relation to Republican prisoners being assaulted in Roe House around the start of February, she claimed that there were no injuries inflicted during the incident, and that this was witnessed by a nurse. What she fails to disclose though is that the same nurse has been referred to in previous articles by us (Substandard Healthcare Oct. 2014) as a result of her unhealthy relationship with the very Riot Squad which continues to forcibly strip-search Republican Prisoners; the same Riot Squad that beat Martin Kelly. The S.E.T. and the Jail Administration are also presently dealing with a number of related complaints from us regarding her, some dating back months. The Republican wing had a regular nurse that day who was accompanied by another S.E.T. member. Why then was the Riot Squad's choice of nurse used in this instance?

Two jail staff members, identified in our subsequent statements and complaints, witnessed the results of Martin's injuries. Furthermore, Sue McAllister, along with Colin Ward (Governor), intervened and impeded a court decision to allow an independent doctor to examine him. This is an established practice within British Prisons in order to let injuries heal without being viewed by impartial and independent doctors. For all the hundreds of Republican Prisoners who have been beaten over the years, some being awarded considerable compensation, not one prison officer has ever been arrested, never mind charged. "Nor Meekly Serve My Time" would be an informative read for those who doubt prison brutality.

Another deliberate fabrication from Sue is on the issue of legal visits only being cancelled on Tuesday 3-2-15 because of a security alert. Solicitors were stopped from entering but were able to use video-link; however, Governors over-ruled staff that came to Republicans' cells to bring them to the legal visit area. Where was the 'security' issue in a video-link consultation? Did the Jail Administration not want first-hand accounts getting out? Also, on Monday 1-2-15 a number of legal visits were denied to us, with solicitors intentionally lied to (numerous solicitors can confirm this), stating that Republican Prisoners refused them. Why would we do this at a time when we were doing all possible to get the truth out; the Prisoner Ombudsman being one such avenue which was availed of via up-to-minute phone calls as events unfolded?

Sue refers specifically to the Independent Assessment Team (IAT) and their recent Stocktake which she points to in a bid to supplant the August 2010 Agreement. The IAT have stated that the work which has taken place since their Stocktake, which has led to the recent spikes in tensions and complaints, "is not what was envisaged in the Stocktake". Sue McAllister and NIPS have officially stated that this work was to "assist prisoner movement", yet David Ford contradicted this in his opening statement during a debate in Stormont on 3-2-15 stating: "NIPS will continue to pay the closest attention to Roe House and take action to protect staff. A clear example of the action that has been taken is the physical changes on the landing that were introduced for that purpose."

Sue is correct in that there are a number of bodies overseeing prisons. The CJINI is one, however; it has repeatedly labelled the regime in Roe House as excessively restrictive since 2005. There has been the criticism also by HMCIP, and by the Anne Owers’ Review Team who commented on the excessive security in comparison to maximum security units in England which hold suspected suicide bombers. Pauline McCabe, the former Prisoner Ombudsman, slated the Jail Administration repeatedly, and created voluminous reports and recommendations sign-posting the way forward. The current ombudsman has criticised the regime frequently, and has commented on DUP interference while exasperatingly stating that the situation "is political and needs a political solution". It must be remembered that the above bodies are not Republican bodies; they are all governmental bodies with the same paymaster as Sue.In her reference to forced strip-searches taking place across the democratic world, it must be remembered that they do indeed take place, but they have also been condemned by human rights groups all over the democratic world. An alternative to strip-searching was found (as part of the August Agreement), and accepted, in the form of the BOSS chair in 2010, yet never fully implemented.

Sue McAllister is attempting to silence critics and return Maghaberry to the safety of freedom from public scrutiny. She is committed to subterfuge, conflict and cover-ups, not a safe environment. A Conflict-Free Environment will only be achieved by the full implementation of the August 2010 Agreement.

Monday, 2 March 2015

Provisional Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams addressed a small crowd outside Crossmaglen yesterday afternoon, after they called on people to come out in force, for a massive show of support, for 31-year-old Frank McCabe, who they put up the pole, that blew him back down again. Unfortunately for the Provos, the meeting was poorly attended, which suggests the people of South Armagh, do not approve of their call, for people to become informers to British Occupation Forces in the area, after their party, executed approximately forty informers in the area already, before Murphy and Adams did their U-turn and became informers to the British themselves, while recruiting for the British in the area.Adams kept a straight face, while saying that Murphy republicans, are not involved in criminal actions along the border or indeed anywhere else. No republican is involved in fuel laundering or the destruction of our environment through the dumping of toxic sludge. No republican is engaged in smuggling tobacco or any other product, In recent times a section of the media, the SDLP, the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin and the Taoiseach Enda Kenny have engaged in a deliberate campaign of vilification against Sinn Féin, and the communities of north Louth and south Armagh. He said, he had met senior police officers from both sides of the border to discuss criminals gangs."The problem for the Provos, is that they lack credibility and even Willie Frazer's goat doesn't swallow it. while the few ethical members.left in their party are resigning in increasing numbers because they cannot handle the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Ex-members of his party, know precisely where Murphy got his election resources in the area and are prepared to go public about it, unless Sinn Fein, cease recruiting informers, for British Occupation Forces in Ireland. Sinn Fein has also recently revealed, that they get their inspiration for their political work, from the Queen of England, as explained by Martin McGuinness. Other members who were disgusted by their party's cover-up of the child rape saga, have resigned, when Adams admitted to cavorting naked, with his dog in his back garden on a trampoline, in his free time and questions are being asked, if like Willie Frazer, he is also engaged in a spot of bestiality.Former members of Sinn Fein, who underwent deep interrogation by the British in Gough Barracks and were shown disturbing, sexual, photographs, while protecting the Murphys, are also considering going public, after Murphy and Sinn Fein called on the public to become informers to the British. It is also rumored, that Sinn Fein have plans, for the near future, to instruct its voters, to join the British Army. It is also understood that when Sinn Fein becomes a junior party with Fine Gael, after the nest election in the south of Ireland, they also plan to instruct voters there, to also join the British Army. Murphy was not available for comment in Mullaghbawn to Irish Blog, because he is believed to be currently engaged, in some sort of secret activities in London with the British.The good news is Ireland bet England yesteday, while using their heads for once under the coaching of a South African, while playing players from every part of Ireland, from every denomination as a United Ireland team.

Sunday, 1 March 2015

In 1933, Fascist Eoin O'Duffy made a speech in South Armagh in which he ordered the Murphy's "Give 'em the lead !"

Eoin O¹Duffy ... his life and legacyProbably one of the most controversial Irishmen of all time was born at Cargaghdoo, near Lough Egish, in the parish of Aughnamullen East, on 30th October 1892. He was Eoin O¹Duffy, later better known as general Eoin O¹Duffy, and he would become one of the most prominent figures in the history of the GAA, not just in Co. Monaghan, but throughout Ulster, and also the ŒLeading Light¹ in the ŒStruggle for Independence¹ of the 1919-21 period in his native Co. Monaghan. By Seamus McCluskey.

Completing his primary, secondary and third level education, O’Duffy became an engineer and worked as a surveyor for Monaghan County Council in the Clones area. Following the formation of the Volunteers and the 1916 Rising, he became one of the movement’s most active members, and his organisational abilities were soon to become very evident during the ensuing War of Independence. By September 1918 he was already a Brigade Officer in the IRA and became the foremost organiser in the county. Jailed in 1918, he was released in 1919, and soon threw himself completely and wholeheartedly into the work of gaining independence for his country.

He had already been very active in GAA circles and he would now use that organisation as a recruiting ground for his Volunteers.Starting with his GAA activities, Eoin O’Duffy became secretary of the Monaghan Co. Board in 1912, when he was a mere youth of twenty, and his organisational abilities here led to his then being elected Secretary of the Ulster GAA Council the following year. He would remain as Ulster Secretary right up until 1923, and would then become Treasurer from 1925 until 1934.

During all this period his GAA and Volunteer activities went hand-in-hand.One of his most unusual exploits in 1918 was on the occasion of ‘Gaelic Sunday’, 4th August of that year. The 1918 Ulster Final on 7th July had had to be cancelled when British soldiers occupied the Cootehill venue and banned the playing of Gaelic Games. To defy the ‘ban’, all nine counties organised challenge matches for Sunday 4th August, and the GAA Central Council followed suit. No permits were applied for anywhere. It would be called ‘Gaelic Sunday’ and over 100,000 took part, leaving the authorities totally helpless.

The ‘proclaimed’ game at Cootehill on 7th July had a unique sequel. Ulster secretary O’Duffy, along with Dan Hogan of Clones, who was to have refereed the Final, and about thirty others, all cycled home from Cootehill towards Newbliss, but were followed by a party of RIC men on their heavy bicycles. O’Duffy knew they were being followed and led the unfortunate RIC men on a fifteen miles wild-goose chase over the by-roads around Newbliss. The sweltering heat and the heavy official uniforms, made matters extremely unpleasant for the pursuers, who must have lost a lot of sweat trying to push their cumbersome machines in such conditions.

The first major event of the War of Independence in the county, in which O’Duffy was involved, was the ‘Siege of Ballytrain’ RIC barracks on 13th February 1920. O’Duffy himself led the attack, in which thirty Volunteers formed the assault party, drawn from companies in Monaghan, Donagh, Clones, Wattlebridge and Corcaghan. The other companies of the county were involved in blocking roads and dismantling telephone wires. The RIC garrison eventually surrendered and O’Duffy’s pattern of attack was soon imitated in later attacks on several other RIC barracks throughout the country.

On the following 17th March (1920) the Ulster GAA Convention was held in Conlon’s Hotel in Clones and O’Duffy, now very much a ‘wanted man’ by the British Authorities, had to enter the meeting in disguise, as RIC spies were waiting outside to arrest him. However, O’Duffy had already departed when the police eventually raided the hotel. The ‘Adjourned Convention’ was held in Armagh on 17th April 1920 and O’Duffy, now even more wanted by the police, again attended, but this time without a disguise. Quickly arrested, it became obvious that O’Duffy actually wanted to be arrested on this occasion as it was his intention to organise a hunger-strike among the Monaghan Prisoners then being held in Crumlin Road jail in Belfast. This he duly did, and very successfully too, and all the Monaghan prisoners were later released.

O’Duffy realised the importance of getting arms for his Volunteers and, consequently, he organised a major raid on several Unionist houses throughout North Monaghan to obtain them. Many guns were captured in these raids but four Volunteers lost their lives that same night, while several others were wounded when stiff resistance was offered. The ‘Night of the Raids’, as it became known, took place on 31st August 1920 and was the brainchild of O’Duffy.

Because of these activities and the continuing ’Troubles’, as they were called, all GAA competitions in Ulster fell very much into arrears. The 1921 Ulster Final was not played until October 1923, as several of the Monaghan players had been arrested by ‘B Specials’ at Dromore, Co. Tyrone, when on their way to play Derry, in Derry, for the original fixture. All of them were ‘O’Duffy Men’, and O’Duffy was instrumental in obtaining the later release of all ten. The 1922 Final was not played until April 1923, and the 1923 Final on 2nd September. The 1923 Ulster Convention had been held in Clones on 17th March, when O’Duffy was replaced as secretary.

One of the great memories of that same year, however, was the Official Opening of Breifne Park in Cavan on 22nd July, the name having been suggested by Eoin O’Duffy.

Following the cessation of hostilities and the Treaty of 1921, O’Duffy rose in the ranks of the Irish Free State army, becoming chief-of-staff in 1922. Fortunately, there was very little activity in Co. Monaghan during the unfortunate Civil War that then ensued and lasted for ten months in 1922-23. Now O’Duffy could concentrate more on his GAA activities but, unfortunately, he was unavoidably absent from the 1929 Ulster Convention held in March 1929.

With the setting up of the new Irish Free State and the establishment of the Garda Siochana in 1922, O’Duffy was put in charge with the rank of Commissioner. Here he again showed remarkable ability in the establishment of our first national police force, and was Chief Marshall at the Catholic Emancipation Centenary celebrations in 1929 and again at the Eucharist Congress of 1932. However, he then incurred the disfavour of the new Taoiseach, Eamon DeValera, and was dismissed from his post on 22nd February 1933.

The Army Comrades Association was founded in 1933 and was basically a welfare organisation for former members of the Irish Free Stage army.

Political meetings of Cumann na nGaedheal, the pro-Treaty party, were frequently disrupted by IRA and the Association adopted the role of protecting these meetings from interference. Members wore a blue shirt and black beret, and became known as ‘The Blueshirts’. Eoin O’Duffy joined the Blueshirts in 1933 and was soon promoted to the post of Leader of the movement, which then became known as the ‘National Guard’. A proposed ‘March on Dublin’, however, was banned by the Government of the day, and the name was duly changed again, this time to ‘Young Ireland Association’. Rallies were held throughout Ireland, one of the largest taking place in Monaghan town on 20th August 1933.

O’Duffy’s recruiting abilities continued and the ranks of the Blueshirts duly swelled. He held a parade of over two hundred in Ballybay in November 1933 and another two hundred in Newbliss three months later. His greatest show-of-strength, however, was in Monaghan on 18th February 1934. O’Duffy had come to Monaghan as President of Fine Gael on 19th November 1933, and the aforementioned rallies and parades then followed. O’Duffy’s unquestionable popularity in the county since his Sinn Fein days, and the fact that he was a native of the county, probably accounted for the remarkable rise of the Blueshirts throughout the county.

Despite his absence from Ulster Convention in February 1934, O’Duffy was still the central figure. He had been the most tireless worker for the GAA in Ulster for the previous twenty-two years, first as secretary, and later as Ulster Delegate on the Central Council, where he proved himself a fearless fighter for the Ulster cause, particularly since the National Games were so vehemently opposed by a majority in the northern province. However, when he became embroiled in party politics, and with his involvement as leader of the Blueshirts, this created a position where many of his former associates now became his enemies. GAA rules also make it quite clear that involvement in controversial politics would preclude him from membership. By 1933 it was generally accepted that O’Duffy had resigned, but by the time of the 1934 Convention, this resignation had still not yet been officially received. No wonder there was a record attendance, and there was a tense atmosphere throughout the entire proceedings.

A letter from O’Duffy proved somewhat ambiguous and did not clearly indicate that he was withdrawing from the post of Treasurer, so his name had to be allowed to go forward. Even Co. Monaghan had nominated an opponent to O’Duffy in the person of Michael Markey, while Gerry Arthurs of Armagh also allowed his name to go forward. Arthurs proved a decisive victor in the ensuing vote at this unique Convention, which heralded the end of O’Duffy’s official association with the GAA, and it was held in Dungannon on 28th February 1934.

In 1936 Eoin O’Duffy recruited and formed an ‘Irish Brigade’ to go to the assistance of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. 700 strong, they contributed to the success of the Catholic leader of Spain and were even blessed by Irish bishops prior to their departure for what was a most unusual expedition, and which has been vividly described by O’Duffy’s himself in his ‘Crusade in Spain’.

Eoin O’Duffy was later elected President of the NACA, the body controlling Irish athletics, and held this post until his death on 30th November 1944. On the 2nd December 1944, Eoin O’Duffy was given a full military funeral and was then laid to rest in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, alongside his friend and ally, Michael Collins.

Taken from Monaghan's MatchDecember 2004Eoin O'Duffy Becomes Leader

In January 1933, the Fianna Fáil government called a surprise election, which the government won comfortably. The election campaign saw a serious escalation of rioting between IRA and ACA supporters. In April 1933, the ACA began wearing the distinctive blue shirt uniform.Eoin O'Duffy was a guerrilla leader in theIRA during the Irish War of Independence, a National Army general during the Civil War, and the policecommissioner in theIrish Free State from 1922 to 1933. After de Valera's re-election in February 1933, Valera dismissed O'Duffy as commissioner, and in July of that year, O'Duffy was offered and accepted leadership of the ACA and renamed it the National Guard. He re-modelled the organisation, adopting elements of European fascism, such as the Roman straight-arm salute, uniforms and huge rallies. Membership of the new organisation became limited to people who were Irish or whose parents "profess theChristian faith". O'Duffy was an admirer of Benito Mussolini, and the Blueshirts adopted corporatism as their chief political aim. According to the constitution he adopted, the organisation was to have the following objectives:

To promote the reunification of Ireland.To oppose Communism and alien control and influence in national affairs and to uphold Christian principles in every sphere of public activity.To promote and maintain social order.To make organised and disciplined voluntary public service a permanent and accepted feature of our political life and to lead the youth of Ireland in a movement of constructive national action.To promote of co-ordinated national organisations of employers and employed, which with the aid of judicial tribunals, will effectively prevent strikes and lock-outs and harmoniously compose industrial influences.To cooperate with the official agencies of the state for the solution of such pressing social problems as the provision of useful and economic public employment for those whom private enterprise cannot absorb.To secure the creation of a representative national statutory organisation of farmers, with rights and status sufficient to secure the safeguarding of agricultural interests, in all revisions of agricultural and political policy.To expose and prevent corruption and victimisation in national and local administration.To awaken throughout the country a spirit of combination, discipline, zeal and patriotic realism which will put the state in a position to serve the people efficiently in the economic and social spheres.

Because of the later attraction of the group's leader Eoin O'Duffy to authoritarian nationalist movements on the European Continent, the Blueshirts are sometimes compared to the MVSN(Blackshirts) of Italy and to some extent performed a similar function.[8][9] Some of the Blueshirts later went to fight forFrancisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and were anti-communist in nature, however historian R.M. Douglas has stated that it is dubious to portray them as an "Irish manifestation of fascism".March on Dublin

The National Guard planned to hold a parade in Dublin in August 1933. It was to proceed to Glasnevin Cemetery, stopping briefly on Leinster lawn in front of the Irish parliament, where speeches were to be held. The goal of the parade was to commemorate past leaders of Ireland,Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and Kevin O'Higgins. It is clear that the IRA and other fringe groups representing various socialists intended to confront the Blueshirts if they did march in Dublin. The government banned the parade, remembering Mussolini's March on Rome, and fearing a coup d'état. Decades later, de Valera told Fianna Fáil politicians that in late summer 1933, he was unsure whether the Irish Army would obey his orders to suppress the perceived threat, or whether the soldiers would support the Blueshirts (who included many ex-soldiers). O'Duffy accepted the ban and insisted that he was committed to upholding the law. Instead, several provincial parades took place to commemorate the deaths of Griffith, O'Higgins and Collins. De Valera saw this move as defying his ban, and the Blueshirts were declared an illegal organisation.Fine Gael and the National Corporate Party[edit]

In response to the banning of the National Guard, Cumann na nGaedheal and theNational Centre Party merged to form a new party, Fine Gael, on 3 September 1933. O'Duffy became its first president, with W. T. Cosgrave and James Dillonacting as vice-presidents. The National Guard changed into the Young Ireland Association, and became part of a youth wing of the party. The party's aim was to create a corporatistUnited Ireland within the British Commonwealth. The 1934 local elections were a trial of strength for the new Fine Gael and the Fianna Fáil government. When Fine Gael won only 6 out of 23 local elections, O’Duffy lost much of his authority and prestige. The Blueshirts began to disintegrate by mid-1934. The Blueshirts floundered also on the plight of farmers during theEconomic War, as the Blueshirts failed to provide a solution. Following disagreements with his Fine Gael colleagues, O'Duffy left the party, although most of the Blueshirts stayed in Fine Gael. In December 1934, O'Duffy attended theMontreux Fascist conference inSwitzerland. He then founded the National Corporate Party, and later raised an "Irish Brigade" that took General Francisco Franco's side in the Spanish Civil War.Eoin O'Duffy - A Cautionary TaleEoin O'Duffy - A Self-Made Hero

by Fearghal McGarry, Oxford University Press,

Fearghal McGarry first made his mark as a historian with Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War (1999), described by me as "the definitive textbook on the subject" in the Fall 2003 issue of Irish Literary Supplement. This was in the context of a review of his second book, Frank Ryan (2002), a biography criticised as both disappointing and sensationalist, with little evidence of the depth of research and analysis required to do justice to its subject. The hope was nonetheless expressed that the author's future work would demonstrate a return to the "high standards of scholarship, balanced presentation and conscientious evaluation" that he had previously shown.

How then does McGarry's third book, a biography of the Irish fascist leader Eoin O'Duffy, measure up to such hopes? The author states that he has attempted to explain rather than condemn such a life, but that he has uncovered little to warrant revision of previous negative assessments of O'Duffy. But this is not for the want of trying. In contrast with his previous biography, this work is meticulously researched. It is the story of a one-time avowed champion of democracy who had fought to vindicate the will of the Irish people in the 1918 election, being transformed into a convinced fascist who sought to crush the will of the Spanish people after their 1936 election; of a highly disciplined and impressive military leader who had led by selfless example during the War of Independence, becoming the high-living commander who selfishly abandoned his own troops during the Spanish Civil War.

McGarry begins by portraying the younger O'Duffy's devotion to duty through tireless work on behalf of the Gaelic Athletic Association. His leadership qualities would subsequently come to the fore as IRA leader in his native County Monaghan during the War of Independence. In contrast with much latter-day writing of Irish history, it is to the author's credit that he begins by clarifying the essential character of that war: "Established by democratic means, the Republic would be defended by violence". And when O'Duffy personally led the attack on Ballytrain RIC barracks in February 1920 he took the opportunity to give the police the following lesson in democracy: "At the general election the people had voted for freedom. The police were acting against the will of the Irish people. He appealed to them to leave the force and join their brother Irishmen."

A year later, in January 1921, there was a sharp escalation in the Monaghan war. McGarry conscientiously chronicles the complexity of such a war in an Ulster border county that not only had a 25 percent Unionist minority, but also a sullen hardcore of defeated Redmondites, which ensured that local hostility to the Republic amounted to as much as a third of the population. The minority was furthermore a very powerful one, in terms of property, influence and guns. McGarry describes the town of Clones as "a Protestant stronghold", while there were as many as 1,800 UVF members throughout Monaghan county as a whole.

In such a frontier society it was inevitable that there would be an inter-ethnic aspect to the conflict. McGarry, however, does himself an injustice by comparing his own detailed narrative of the war in Monaghan with Peter Hart's earlier approach to Cork in The IRA and the Enemies (1998), although he does acknowledge that other historians have questioned the accuracy of Hart's research. But it should also be pointed out that Cork was no border territory. The minority of Cork Loyalists who supported Britain's war against the Republic were against self-government for any part of Ireland. In contrast, the two Ulster communities involved in a conflict of nationalities in County Monaghan can be viewed, at least in retrospect, as having been engaged in creating their own de facto Boundary Commission, through a struggle to determine on which side of a future border they would lie. That this was essentially a conflict between two national allegiances rather than a religious war was underscored by O'Duffy's willingness to embrace an Ulster Protestant like Ernest Blythe who had crossed over from his own community in order to give his allegiance to the Irish independence struggle.

It was, of course, a conflict that could very easily have degenerated into something far more ugly. McGarry writes that "Republican violence in Monaghan was inevitably more sectarian than much of the rest of the country", but he also gives credit to O'Duffy for "the relative restraint demonstrated by the IRA during this period." In terms of the ruthless pursuit of informers, the author recognises that "order could not be maintained without discipline." He concedes that notwithstanding the high proportion of Protestant targets, "few, if any, people were shot solely because of their religion." And where he does speak of "questionable murders", it is to his credit as a historian that he presents the pros and cons of each individual case surveyed, allowing the reader to come to different conclusions than his own. For this reviewer there is just one such killing that remains questionable as to whether the motivation might have been less a suspicion of informing and more a desire to eliminate a vociferous political opponent who had disrupted a local authority vote of sympathy on the death of Cork Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney. However, that particular victim had not been some Unionist opponent but rather a Redmondite Hibernian one; not at all a Protestant Orangeman but a Catholic "Molly Maguire".

Eoin O'Duffy emerged from the War of Independence with a well-deserved reputation that his Civil War opponent Ernie O'Malley described as "energetic and commanding". How then, in the years before his death in 1944, did O'Duffy end up being described in intelligence reports as the "representative of the Axis powers in Ireland" and a "potential Quisling, suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning"? McGarry retells the story of O'Duffy's disastrous 1937 intervention on behalf of the fascist side in Spain that "cost Franco a small fortune - and killed more of his own soldiers than the enemy." He presents some new research in this area, notably O'Duffy's recently found diary of that escapade, and he quotes the description of O'Duffy as an "Operetta General" penned by one of Franco's own generals. McGarry concludes that Spain destroyed O'Duffy's reputation as a man of action, as previously "the General's reputation as a politician had been destroyed by his leadership of Fine Gael." But how had this degeneration come about?

McGarry devotes a lot of attention to O'Duffy's position as a protégé of IRB President Michael Collins, who would eventually promote him to Treasurer of that body's Supreme Council. While the IRA itself was a democratically structured organisation, the continued existence within its ranks of a secret society like the IRB was to have a profoundly destabilising effect, both North and South. Collins hailed O'Duffy as "the coming man", proceeding in July 1921 to pull off a stunt behind the back of Minister for Defence Cathal Brugha by unilaterally making O'Duffy Deputy Chief of Staff of the IRA for the post-Truce period. Collins brought O'Duffy with him to London for the start of the Treaty negotiations and it was O'Duffy who would obtain the artillery from Britain's General Macready in order to commence the Civil War in July 1922.

Meanwhile the IRB leadership was the behind-the-scenes manipulator of another little war. In the summer of 1921 O'Duffy had already explicitly criticised deValera for suggesting that counties with a Unionist majority should be allowed to opt out of a unified Ireland if Britain would agree to a Republic for the rest of the country. With Collins by his side, O'Duffy delivered an inflammatory speech in Armagh in September 1921 in which he threatened the majority of people in Belfast that, if they were not going to accept being part of the Irish nation, "they would have to use the lead against them." Such bombast only had the effect of intensifying the horrific Orange pogroms against that city's Catholic minority, just as in the post-Treaty month of March 1922 the murder of the McMahon family followed a Collins/O'Duffy military offensive in West Ulster. Without the knowledge of the Free State cabinet, O'Duffy and Collins were to be responsible for yet another failed Northern offensive during the month of May that ended in further disaster for Northern Ireland's Catholic minority. O'Duffy had indeed subdued the Unionist minority in his native Monaghan, but to ham-fistedly dream of similarly taking on the Unionist majority in Antrim and Down was quite a different proposition.

During the course of the Civil War, as well as in his capacity as Commissioner of the Garda Síochána for the first decade of its existence, O'Duffy continued to employ the rhetoric of democracy in his public utterances. McGarry, however, also highlights O'Duffy's cultivation of a highly orchestrated personality cult on his own behalf, at the same time as the Commissioner's private reports to Cabinet were complaining that "the Irish public is rotten." The General even began to alarm his own ruthless Minister for Home Affairs Kevin O'Higgins who, in the months prior to his 1927 assassination, had been on the point of sacking O'Duffy.

Knowing the threat that O'Duffy had come to pose to their own regime makes the Cumann na nGaedheal leadership all the more culpable in their attempt to bring down the Fianna Fáil Government in 1933 with a strategy of installing Blueshirt leader O'Duffy as the first President of Fine Gael. McGarry provides chapter and verse to demonstrate just how thoroughly fascist-minded and anti-democratic O'Duffy's own personal philosophy had become at this stage. And while quibbling with a statement of my own in a 1984 study - that anti-semitism had also come to form an integral feature of O'Duffy's personal ideology - he nonetheless provides year-by-year examples of such anti-semitism that actually confirm my conclusions. But McGarry does not always get his facts right. When he quotes Seán MacEntee's accusation that one particular Blueshirt had personally murdered a Dublin Jew, he states in a footnote that this had occurred during the Civil War. It had not. It had occurred six months after the conclusion of that particular conflict, in November 1923, and the subsequent escape to America of the army officer charged with that murder had been facilitated by both Garda and Free State Army authorities.

The very last words of McGarry's narrative sum up O'Duffy's biography as "a cautionary tale". What makes it all the more so is the author's determination to demonstrate that O'Duffy was not just some solitary freakish individual. He highlights how the Cumann na nGaedheal leadership's own virulent propaganda had already begun to publicly question the legitimacy of the Fianna Fáil Government's election victories of 1932 and 1933, before they ever came a-courting O'Duffy to become the leader of their blueshirted second coming. But McGarry also says a lot more. In the first history of that movement, The Blueshirts (1970), Maurice Manning of Fine Gael had expressed some disquiet at one or two of Ernest Blythe's 1933 utterances. Blythe's importance as an ideologist of the corporate state was more specifically highlighted by Mike Cronin in The Blueshirts and Irish Politics (1997). McGarry, however, takes research in this area very much further by providing a systematic narrative of the highly racialist and violently anti-democratic hate-propaganda penned by Blythe throughout the course of 1933 and 1934.

O'Duffy's own personal pietism has sometimes led to a far too simplistic classification of Blueshirt fascism as being little more than an excess of Catholic zeal. Blythe, of course, also knew how to opportunistically play the Papal encyclical card, but he himself never ceased to be an Ulster Protestant. Blythe's fascism was profoundly political and was in many ways much more alarming than that of O'Duffy, because it was all the more coherently thought out. McGarry notes that Blythe's fascism continued unabated throughout the war years and that Irish military intelligence also viewed him as another potential Quisling. Blythe surely merits a biography in his own right. Having produced such a comprehensive biography of O'Duffy, one hopes that Fearghal McGarry might be motivated to do just that.

First of all I would like to wish Tommy McCabe, a full speedy recovery, having said that, I am not going to lose any sleep over it, and this why. There are two basic rules, that every child in the constituency of Conor Murphy, in Newry South Armagh learn at a very young age. First you do not Tout, or become an informer, to British Occupation forces. Number two, you do not remove flags or posters, from poles in the constituency, unless you are a foolish British soldier or an idiot member of their Occupation forces. You will not have much sympathy, from any Irish person, who is remotely republican, if something happens to you as a consequence. I've no doubt that when Tommy recovers, he will at least feature on page three of the Sun, when he makes a full recovery, as part of British propaganda, to replace their page three dolls. I hope he has learned a lesson from it, and the next time someone orders him to do some pole dancing, or remove a tricolour or poster, he tells them to do their own dirty work themselves.As anyone who reads my articles will already know, I have regularly opposed in the strongest terms, violence of any sort, against any civilians, from whatever quarter it comes. This is not the road to liberation and I disagree vehemently with kneecapping. I believe there are far more progressive ways of dealing with anti-social behaviour, with the legalization of drugs, and rehabilitation, as a progressive step, in the right direction. Now like most Republicans in the US, many Irish republicans believe, they have the right to bear arms, particularly in that part of Ireland, where the British are still conducting their Dirty War against Irish people. Proof of this has come recently, from the British Viceroyal's office, confirming, they have their own specialists inside the prison, where Irish POWs are tortured, stripped searched and anally probed, to break down their political resistance, psychologically.As has been fully described in British handbooks of how to conduct Dirty War, part of their strategy includes bringing this into the politics of British Occupied Ireland and use tools like Conor Murphy, to break Irish resistance, along with the compliant fools of his party colleagues. As a former chairperson of their party in Newry, it took a while for me to cotton on to what was happening, after which I resigned, as a point of principle.As someone who was involved in setting up their first two offices in Newry, along with Tom Lonergan, I do have experience with regard to the issues that confronts Conor Murphy. First of all, let me categorically state, that those offices were never created for the purpose of collaborating with British Occupation forces, no matter what uniform they wore. Secondly I can categorically state, that it never happened on my watch in Newry, and I am certain it never happened on Jim McAlister's watch in Camlough or elsewhere, as it would totally defeat the purpose of the many sacrifices made by thousands of Irish republicans and would break the ethics of the struggle. Our voluntary, unpaid function, was to assist ordinary people, with everyday problems and with issues related to the Housing Executive.I had one occasion, outside of the office, where I had a dilemma about this. I lived most of time in Newry, in North Street Flats, which were apartments of several floors. One day a mother from a ground-floor apartment, requested my help, because, she believed a bomb had been left in a dustbin right outside her front door, which was completely surrounded by apartments on all sides. I knew that no republicans had left it there, and the only ones who would do such a thing, would be one of Willie's mob. I also knew that it was potentially fatal, to lift the lid. I actually could hear, as she had told me, something ticking inside the bin. So I gently lifted the rather large bin and carried it into the middle of the square. Unlike the Tommy McCabe incident, I did not ask someone else to do it. Having moved it, I warned all of the children in the vicinity, to stay well clear of this threat. I then had the problem of how, if it was a bomb, to defuse it.During my may interrogations In Gough Barracks, mostly by MI5, I was aware from the outset, that I was being profiled, as either a dove or a hawk, for future reference. I conducted myself, in such a way, as to pass the attitude test, without divulging any information whatsoever, that would betray my community or comrades. At the end of one of my three-day detentions, they gave me a phone number to call if I should change my mind. Now I have been interrogated so many times in my life, that I have lost track of it all, but it would be scores of times. Now I was also evaluating them, just as much as they were me. They knew for instance, that I loved hurling and wanted to talk about that, but I politely avoided this. However I came to the conclusion, that not all of them were rotten, and I have to be fair and say, that not all cops are malign, but like politicians I do not trust them. However in this dilemma with the potential bomb, I knew it would seriously compromise my community, if I called the RUC and asked for a bomb disposal unit. I knew any information, no matter how insignificant, would eventually find its way, to people like Willie Frazer, the UVF and British death squads, roaming Ireland. It is also a critical factor in the event of any civil war, caused by the British Occupation.So I called this MI5 number and asked them to send a bomb disposal unit. To this day, I do not know if it was a real bomb or not, I also taped the conversation for transparency reasons. This was the one and only occasion I phoned British Occupation forces in Ireland, it was my responsibility, as I was the only person at that time, taking problems in the Provisional Sinn Fein office. Which takes me to Murphy's dilemma. The RUC/psni are a British force, they are headed by an ex-RUC man. Whether or not, he belongs to the Orange Order, is a matter of debate. There is an old saying in Ireland to the effect, that blood is thicker than water, which at the end of the day, I feel holds true. In almost every British ex-colony worldwide, as a result of their divide and conquer policies, there has been a civil war in almost all of them, as a result of their legacy. Sadly the DNA of blood, is where the lines are drawn. So when Murphy and his party are calling on Irish people to become informers to British Occupation forces, they are I believe being sociopathic.We already know of the many victims of Murphy policing in Newry South Armagh. There are numerous examples out there, of the Political Policing, that exists within the RUC/psni. Murphy policing, has involved death threats issued, to censor free speech and any alternative, legitimate, political activity. There is also the matter of Paul Quinn.So these are some of the problems. My own expereince has taught me, that policing at all times must be apolitical. That it is primarily a community matter, to be decided and conducted by communities. In the village, I currently live in, this is the reality and it works well. The policing needs to reflect all interests within the community, decided by a dialectic uncensored, taking as much time as is necessary to decide, with every voice listened to patiently. The experience of elders, is very important in this. Women, particularly mothers, have much to contribute in this. In the event of serious or violent crime, then yes outside forces need to be brought in, with total transparency, which must be apolitical. The village should at all times, have a right to witness any aspect of custody or actions taken during this process, including interrogation and detention. Certain males and females need to be appointed, with the approval of all the community for purposes of physical restraint, in cases of violence. Domestic violence also requires counselling by both women and men. Laws and bylaws, need to be clearly stipulated and displayed in public places, so that there is no misunderstanding. Civic classes need to undertaken by the whole community, with discussion groups, to patiently tease out, differing views.As I have said previously, the British Empire, was built on piracy and smuggling. They should not under any circumstance have a monopoly, on the artificial border, they created within the small island of Ireland. Smuggling is as old, as the oldest professions of banking and prostitution. It's a fact of life, created originally by poor people, to augment their paltry existence. I believe no one or any party should have a monopoly in this reality but British Occupation will exploit these common divisions, within communities, to divide and conquer. Anyone who co-operates with the British, exploiting these divisions or betraying the details, is betraying their own community.We Irish people need to learn to practice solidarity. The reason England conquered Ireland, is that they learned from the Roman empire, the importance of sticking together in close formation, while Celts went into battle mostly as individuals. We can have our division but it should be agreed, that they are resolved without violence among ourselves, in a dialogue and uncensored disagreement, for however long it takes. Violence is an admission of defeat and disqualifies the party from any civilized debate.Paddy Barry, my first father-in-law, who joined the travelling community, from a farm in Kilkenny, when he fell in love with Norah Barry, the daughter of Maggie Barry, who was Queen of Gypsies, once said to me, there is no nature left in people these days at all. Nature is something picked up from being around nature and animals. It's the bond that keeps a tribe together. Tribes that stand the test of time and all the challenges of globalization, have a strong Elder element, because it has much experience, the most valuable thing in Life. Commonsense evolves with it and they both appear to be rare commodities these days. Newry & South Armagh, might reconsider the importance of these values, if it is not to tear itself apart, with the manipulation of outside British interference. They are important values to be passed on to the next generation, instead of pure individualism, short-sightedness, selfishness and self-centredness. We are all selfish to a lesser or greater extent, but there is such a thing, as intelligent selfishness, that can benefit the whole community. The Barrys lived outside Crossmaglen for many years in a caravan. They had a very big family, whom they fed with a bit of smuggling, selling turf and butter. along with Maggie singing at the many fairs around the place.They were treated well by both the Protestant and Catholic communities around the area.Smuggling, bartering, prostitution, haggling, squabbling, bullying, are elements of human life, as old as time. Disputes need to be settled by a community of leaders, who listen carefully to the many sides of every story and adjudicate, with the benefit of experience. This people power should not be given away, to outsiders or politicians, who are motivated almost exclusively by self-interest and greed, who will always divide to get their way. We need to learn again and teach the value of respecting the Elders, instead of her Majestys brute forces or the whole community will perish, to the modern day sanitized, ruthless pirates, the Corporations. The Community needs people to empower themselves, to provide leadership with clarity, decisiveness, responsibility, communication skills, that realizes the importance of listening, as well instructing and above all patience to recognize the truth or essence, as much as possible. It's a big ask but if we really want an Ireland, that reflects th aspirations of 1916, we will work for it. I also reluctantly agree, that Irish republicans, do have the right to bear arms, strictly for defensive purposes, because, unfortunately, the invader is armed to the teeth. People also have the right to fly whatever flags or posters they want, and people who remove them, do so at their own considerable risk. Murphy if you don't like my pole dancers, go fuck yourself and don't be making a Blueshirt out of poor ould Tommy, with your propaganda! Below is an article from a newspaper, that many traditional Irish republicans, were very fond of. Unfortunately I heard last week, that there was some sort of issue, with censorship of the family of Mairead Farrell. I am not fully aware of all of the details but I do hope for the sake of Unity in the Movement, that it is sorted out by now. For those reasons, I will not comment further, until a solution is reached. I hope for the same in South Armagh but we have to stand up for ourselves, we are not sheep! Principles before Personalities!

Sinn Fein has warned that a lack of confidence in the PSNI police is encouraging illegal activity in border areas.

Local Sinn Fein MP Conor Murphy spoke out after the son of a prominent republican was injured in an attack outside Crossmaglen on Wednesday.Frank McCabe Jnr (pictured) suffered injuries to the arms and face when a pipe bomb exploded at around 5am on Wednesday morning. The device exploded as he attempted to remove a poster labelling a family member as a ‘tout’ from near the family home.
Sinn Fein said there had been death threats against his father, Frank McCabe Snr, as well as Mr Murphy himself in recent weeks.
The incident represents a worrying development in a battle for public support in the South Armagh and North Louth region.
British forces have long promoted criminal activity as a tactic to undermine and challenge republican communities. South Armagh was itself once referred to as ‘bandit country’ by journalists who demonised the area as a hotbed of crime and insurrection.
The PSNI, and formerly the RUC, have traditionally avoided patrolling the staunchly republican area for fear of IRA attack. While the Provisional IRA has long since disbanded in the area, a breakaway armed group known as Oglaigh na hEireann has operated in the area in recent years.
Sinn Fein has alleged that some of those currently involved in illegal activity in the area are linked to Oglaigh na hEireann, who they describe as an “unrepresentative militarist faction”. The party called for a show of solidarity from its supporters on Sunday in the wake of the attack and the threats against its members.
“This area is a republican heartland and bedrock of support for Sinn Fein’s peace strategy,” it said. “The party’s electoral strength in the area, and widespread respect for the local republican leadership was a central element in Sinn Fein’s decision to support policing in 2007.”
But it said here had been a “sinister and systematic upswing” in illegal activity across the area, which the PSNI and Gardai police across the border had failed to act against, “despite the active support of local people”.
And Mr Murphy warned of “another agenda” being operated by the PSNI to oppose Sinn Fein’s political strategy.
He said that “criminals” were being “protected by the protocols which govern policing in the north, in particular the way the PSNI respond to reports of criminal activity”.
Newry Armagh Assembly member Megan Fearon added, “While it is the Tories who have imposed austerity cuts to public services it is the PSNI who are responsible for scrapping neighbourhood policing in south Armagh.

Saturday, 28 February 2015

The threat from dissident republicans remains severe in Northern Ireland but moderate in Britain, the Northern Secretary Theresa Villiers has informed Westminster.

Ms Villiers provided the British parliament with the latest MI5 assessment of the dissident threat on Thursday a day after the latest suspected dissident attack left a young south Armagh man seriously injured.

Francis McCabe junior suffered face and chest injuries when a booby-trap bomb exploded as he was taking down a poster on Wednesday morning from a pole close to his home in Crossmaglen.

The attack relates to continuing tensions in south Armagh between Sinn Féin and its supporters and members of dissident groups. Dissidents have been putting up posters accusing some Sinn Féin supporters of being “informers” because they are cooperating with the PSNI.

Booby-trap

Local Sinn Féin MP Conor Murphy accused those responsible for the bomb of attempted murder. He said the poster was placed on the pole in the premeditated expectation that someone would take it down, thus triggering the booby-trap bomb. Mr Murphy called on the police to act against the dissidents before “someone is killed”.

The PSNI has now cordoned off the scene of the explosion with a number of roads around the area also closed. “Police are working to deal with the risk to the public whilst minimising disruption where possible and are grateful for the continued co-operation of the public,” said PSNI Inspector Lorraine Dobson.

Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said on Thursday that the bombing was carried out by “criminals masquerading as republicans” and was “an attack on the peace process and an attempt to intimidate the entire community of south Armagh and north Louth”.

“The attack has followed a campaign of intimidation in the south Armagh area against people in the community who have taken huge personal risks advocating accountable policing with the community,” said Mr McGuinness.

The attack happened as Ms Villiers was preparing to inform the British parliament on Thursday of the level of the dissident threat.

Attack ‘highly likely’

She said it was “severe” in Northern Ireland which means an attack is “highly likely” and “moderate” in Britain meaning “an attack is possible but not likely”.

Ms Villiers said there were 22 “national security” or serious dissident attacks in 2014 while there has been one so far this year. “PSNI and prison officers as well as members of the armed forces continue to be the principal targets for dissident republican terrorists and the threat to life persists,” she said.

“A number of these violent groupings continue to attack, or aspire to carry out attacks, including the so-called ‘new’ IRA, Óglaigh na hÉireann and factions of the Continuity IRA,” added the Northern Secretary.

She said that in addition to more serious incidents dissidents were also engaged in other activity including “brutal punishment shootings as a means to try to exert fear and control within local communities”.

Dissidents are also heavily involved in criminality and this latest evaluation of their threat came after British Revenue and Customs searched a vehicle in south Armagh on Tuesday and recovered raw leaf tobacco worth an estimated £236,000 in lost duty and taxes.

Earlier this month, 12 tonnes of unprocessed tobacco worth an estimated £2 million in lost revenue was seized in an unconnected operation in Armagh.

Ms Villiers said that although “risks endure” the PSNI, MI5 and the Garda continued to disrupt dissident activity and had had a number of notable successes against these groups. She referred to incidents such as the arrest of 15 men in Newry last November, the discovery of a weapons hide in Co Fermanagh last October, and the uncovering of an arms cache in Dublin.

She added: “The close working relationship between PSNI and AGS (An Garda Síochána), and their joint efforts both North and South of the Border, has led to considerable success in combating the threat from dissident republican terrorists over the last six months. I am confident that both police services will do all that they can to build on this through 2015 as they make progress with a number of ongoing investigations.”

Ms Villiers said that “with every attack that is mounted and the many more that are foiled, the PSNI and its security partners become more knowledgeable, resilient and able to tackle the threat and bring perpetrators to justice”.

Rise of Fascism is Again the Issue

By John Pilger

February 27, 2015 "ICH" - The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

"To initiate a war of aggression...," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten".

The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died." His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew... that if we waited one more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers.

For Obama, Cameron and Hollande, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships".

Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, "confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency".

The "humanitarian war" against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing "genocide" against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, and much of Serbia's infrastructure in ruins, along with schools, hospitals, monasteries and the national TV station, international forensic teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume evidence of the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide. The "holocaust" was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent, multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. Most of its utilities and major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to capture its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been struck; Germany would recognise Croatia. Yugoslavia was doomed.

In Washington, the US saw that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans. Nato, then an almost defunct Cold War relic, was reinvented as imperial enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in Rambouillet, in France, the Serbs were subjected to the enforcer's duplicitous tactics. The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which the US delegation inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia - a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation - and the implementation of a "free-market economy" and the privatisation of all government assets. No sovereign state could sign this. Punishment followed swiftly; Nato bombs fell on a defenceless country. It was the precursor to the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria and Libya, and Ukraine.

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations - 69 countries - have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

"Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over." These were opening words of Obama's 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment. "The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion," said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records. The majority have been killed - civilians and soldiers - during Obama's time as president.

The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina. In his lauded and much quoted book 'The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives', Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of US policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion... Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilisation." He is right. As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Carter's National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan's first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?

In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform programme that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan's doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers. "Every girl," recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon, "could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported."

The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, "there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution]". Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the "threat of a promising example".

On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorised support for tribal "fundamentalist" groups known as the mujaheddin, a program that grew to over $500 million a year in U.S. arms and other assistance. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan's first secular, reformist government. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that "the United States' larger interests... would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan." The italics are mine.

The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions of dollars in cash from the CIA. Hekmatyar's specialty was trafficking in opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London, he was lauded by Prime Minister Thatcher as a "freedom fighter".

Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation and "destabilise" the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, "a few stirred up Muslims". His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, began to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. The Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden was one of them. Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn, New York, and given paramilitary training at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called "Operation Cyclone". Its success was celebrated in 1996 when the last PDPA president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah - who had gone before the UN General Assembly to plead for help - was hanged from a streetlight by the Taliban.

The "blowback" of Operation Cyclone and its "few stirred up Muslims" was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the "war on terror", in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. The enforcer's message was and remains: "You are with us or against us."

The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its "free fire zones", "body counts" and "collatoral damage". In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians ("gooks") were murdered by the US; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.

Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat".

"For goose-steppers," wrote the historian Norman Pollock, "substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while."

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this.

The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited to wring their hands at the "tragedy" of American psychopaths having to kill people in distant places - just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood's violence, the actor and director Clint Eastwood, was nominated for an Oscar this year for his movie, 'American Sniper', which is about a licensed murderer and nutcase. The New York Times described it as a "patriotic, pro-family picture which broke all attendance records in its opening days".

There are no heroic movies about America's embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens - as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the "father" of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme.

In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its "new wave" hailed by the enforcer as "nationalists".

This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. On February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get "the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry". If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia.

No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe - with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, ranted abuse about European leaders for opposing the US arming of the Kiev regime. She referred to the German Defence Minister as "the minister for defeatism". It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev. The wife of Robert D. Kagan, a leading "neo-con" luminary and co-founder of the extreme right wing Project for a New American Century, she was foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney.

Nuland's coup did not go to plan. Nato was prevented from seizing Russia's historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea - illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 - voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s. The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.

At the same time, the Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleaning. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions. More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping "the violence" caused by the "Russian invasion". The Nato commander, General Breedlove - whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove - announced that 40,000 Russian troops were "massing". In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine - a third of the population - have long sought a federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not "separatists" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous "states" are a reaction to Kiev's attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as "another bright day in our national history". In the American and British media, this was reported as a "murky tragedy" resulting from "clashes" between "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) and "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims - "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint".

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine. On January 29, Ukraine's top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed the very basis for US and EU sanctions on Russia when he told a news conference emphatically: "The Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian Army". There were "individual citizens" who were members of "illegal armed groups", but there was no Russian invasion. This was not news. Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev's Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for "full scale war" with nuclear-armed Russia.

On February 21, US Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, introduced a bill that would authorise American arms for the Kiev regime. In his Senate presentation, Inhofe used photographs he claimed were of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, which have long been exposed as fakes. It was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's fake pictures of a Soviet installation in Nicaragua, and Colin Powell's fake evidence to the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia and the portrayal of its president as a pantomime villain is unlike anything I have known as a reporter. Robert Parry, one of America's most distinguished investigative journalists, who revealed the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote recently, "No European government, since Adolf Hitler's Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet across the West's media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established... If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three - much as it did into world war one a century ago - all you need to do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or reason."

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack... In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons." In the Guardian on February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. "Putin must be stopped," said the headline. "And sometimes only guns can stop guns." He conceded that the threat of war might "nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement"; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that "America has the best kit".

In 2003, Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, repeated the propaganda that led to the slaughter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote, "has, as [Colin] Powell documented, stockpiled large quantities of horrifying chemical and biological weapons, and is hiding what remains of them. He is still trying to get nuclear ones." He lauded Blair as a "Gladstonian, Christian liberal interventionist". In 2006, he wrote, "Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran."

The outbursts - or as Garton-Ash prefers, his "tortured liberal ambivalence" - are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The war criminal Blair is their lost leader. The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash's piece appeared, published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: "The F-35. GREAT For Britain". This American "kit" will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered across the world. In tune with its advertiser, a Guardian editorial has demanded an increase in military spending.

Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev's new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas "investment". She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship. They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden's son is on the board of Ukraine's biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine's rich farming soil.

Above all, they want Ukraine's mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia's long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country's economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.